your heart on the line
by Elsin
Summary: [AU of murkybluematter's Rigel Black Chronicles][part of Lay of the Lioness; takes place after ch.3] In some ways, Pansy Parkinson is exactly what she seems to be: a kind, polite pureblood Heiress, who prefers to be calm and steady, who does not have controversial thoughts to even consider voicing. In other ways, she is most decidedly not.


When Rigel and Draco returned from the Black City, a hush fell over Persopolis. Draco looked distinctly odd without his outer robe; Rigel seemed to be wearing it. They returned from the City that liked to eat souls, and Pansy didn't know what to say about that at all.

Riddle had been furious the day before, upon learning that they'd gone, but now he stood and smiled a politician's smile, and Pansy didn't think she liked it quite as much as she once would have.

"You're both idiots," she snapped when she caught up to the boys later, both cleaned up and fed but still looking weary. "I can't believe you—" Well, that wasn't quite true. She _could _believe they'd do such a thing.

"Sorry, Pan," said Rigel. He wore a large crystal ring on his right hand, and he spun it around his forefinger while he spoke. "We—we didn't think you'd let us go. If we woke you."

"Well, you were probably right about that much," she admitted. "It wasn't your brightest moment. _Either _of your brightest moments." She paused. "Why did you go?" It wasn't like Rigel to do something like this; it wasn't really like Draco either. Both of her friends were usually more cautious than that.

"It called," said Rigel, sounding distant. He pulled the crystal ring from his finger and tucked it away.

"We answered," said Draco, low and final. "The call—it's not the sort of thing you _refuse_."

"Oh," said Pansy, though she didn't truly understand, and she let it go at that.

xxx

Rigel won the Tournament. At the award ceremony, Pansy sat next to Draco, and she saw how his eyes narrowed while he focused on the stage. For her part—well, _she _was no empath, but she had eyes just as well as the next person, and she knew Rigel.

His shoulders were tense and his jaw was set with what she thought was combined rage and resignation. When Riddle offered him the Rod of Zuriel, his eyes narrowed slightly, but he let his hand close around it anyway.

Riddle pronounced that the victory of Arcturus Rigel Black meant that purebloods were, of course, magically superior. Next to her, Draco snorted softly. When she turned to look at him, disgust and disdain she'd not expected were written plainly across his face, but when he caught her eye he shook his head slightly, and the expression was gone as if it had never been.

"Later," he said softly. "It's nothing to shout about here." Pansy nodded, and let it go for the time being.

They had one night left in Persopolis after the award ceremony. There was a feast then, as there had been before, but Rigel disappeared not long after it began and Pansy found that she wasn't very hungry and quietly excused herself. She slipped out of the party, and wandered down a familiar corridor until she came to a door with a brass doorknob, which was slightly ajar.

She pushed open the door to the Sunset Room and stepped inside to find Rigel and Draco already there, looking out over the desert into the dying sun. They sat close to each other, not quite touching; unusually, it was Draco rather than Rigel who seemed a bit stiff.

Pansy didn't speak; nor did she go to join them. Instead, she stepped back and let the door close to where it had been.

There was a space between her and the boys, a space that hadn't been there before, and she wasn't at all sure what she could _do _about it.

xxx

They returned to Hogwarts for the final two months of their fourth year, and when they had been back only two days Draco and Rigel came to her, both seeming unaccountably nervous, and glanced back and forth. This went on long enough that Pansy was about ready to snap at them to _spit it out already _when finally Rigel spoke.

"Will you come to the Room of Requirement with us?" he asked. "We've—there's a conversation we need to have, and it's not for prying ears to be privy to."

"All right," said Pansy, curiosity burning in her; there was something changed between Rigel and Draco and she thought they might be about to tell her what it was.

So she followed them up to the seventh floor and through the door, which Rigel opened for them. On the other side was what seemed to be a small, slightly dusty apartment, and Rigel flushed a bit.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "I can just—"

"There's nothing wrong with here," said Pansy, "unless you'd rather we be elsewhere?"

"No," said Rigel, "no—this is fine." He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and sank onto the floor, gesturing at the couch. "Sit, please," he said. "You'll probably want to, anyway."

Pansy looked at Draco then, who himself looked uneasy but nodded.

"Rigel's right," said Draco. "You should sit."

And so Pansy sat, and Rigel sighed, and said, "Look—this is going to sound insulting no matter _how _I put it, so I'll just throw it out there—I need you to promise me that whatever you hear in this room today won't go beyond the three of us. I won't make you swear an oath before I tell you… I trust you, you know." The last bit was soft and sounded almost surprised, as if Rigel himself had not intended to be so sincere. He went on. "But I still need you to promise me. It's—this is a crime I'm about to tell you about. One that's not hurting anyone, I don't think, but it's still illegal, and to spread this about would ruin at least two lives if not many more."

"All right," said Pansy, realizing that this must be serious indeed for Rigel to so bluntly request her secrecy. "I promise. Whatever you reveal here—I won't willingly reveal it to anyone else, not unless you tell me I may do so."

"Thank you," he said, looking unaccountably relieved.

Draco, pacing back and forth, began to speak. "We went to the Black City, as you know," he said. "And in the City we fought some—demons, I suppose you could call them. They called themselves the Ysandir, and claimed to be immortals. We killed them, though we're still not sure how—but early in that fight, they, well. They did something that, ah, showed me certain things. And—" Here he paused, shook his head. He seemed to be trying to frame his words.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Rigel muttered. "They made my clothes disappear," he said frankly, "and Draco saw that I've a girl's body. That I'm a girl." He sighed again, pointed his (her?) wand at his (her?) throat, and murmured a spell. "If you don't believe me," said Rigel, "this is my real voice." Rigel's new voice was lighter than before, and lower than Pansy's, but it was clear and unbroken—with it, Rigel sounded two years younger.

"I don't understand," said Pansy, for she didn't, truly.

"Tell me," said Rigel, turning to face her fully, "who do I look like, Pansy?"

"Harriett Potter," said Pansy, "though they say in Society that you can't control that."

At that Rigel laughed, long and low and utterly humorless. "They're wrong, at that," said Rigel, "though I don't control it directly. I look the way I do because of a potion, you see—I modified the Polyjuice to last a year at a time. I found an old spell that can blend two hairs to make a fused appearance."

Pansy's heart was beating uncomfortably fast. Draco was pacing the floor; his footsteps and Rigel's words were the only sounds against the oppressive silence.

"You know I love potions," said Harriett Potter, smile wry. "My cousin—the real Arcturus Rigel Black—he's wanted to be a Healer since we were eight."

"You _switched_," said Pansy, impressed in spite of herself. She had always known, after all, that Rigel Black lived a life of secrets. And he—she—had already admitted that this was about something criminal. Admittedly she had not imagined anything quite like _this_, though. "Bloody _hell_, Rigel—Potter—Harriett—whatever you want to go by. You've been committing blood identity theft since you were _eleven years old_."

"Yeah," said Harriett, now looking away slightly. "Maybe not the brightest call I've ever made, but—we can hardly go _back _now. And I _was_, you know, eleven at the time."

"Certainly not," said Pansy. "I doubt if Arcturus is as gifted a potioneer as _you_, after all."

"No," she said. "No, he's not. Archie's damn good, don't get me wrong—but he's not me. And he's a much better Healer than I am, too."

"Then he must be a skilled Healer indeed," said Pansy, who had seen Rigel—Harriett—_Merlin_, this was a mess—heal people before.

"His skillset is much broader than mine," said Harriett with a shrug, "and yeah—he's good." Her voice swelled with pride.

xxx

They continued in their classes, and nothing had changed except what Pansy knew. It didn't hold that she ought to _feel _as if so much was different now—but it _was_.

"Call me Harry," Harriett had told her, and Pansy had nodded, and renamed the other girl in her head yet again. Aloud, she called the other girl _he _and _him _and _Rigel _or _Rye_. Internally, Harry was a _girl_, and _Harry_.

And she did not tell Harry how she was feeling about it all; she wasn't sure herself, for one thing. For another, Harry didn't need _Pansy's _emotional baggage on top of whatever she had herself.

In Persopolis, she had thought the winner of the Blood Tournament to be a pureblood boy; now she knew that the winner was a halfblood and a girl like herself. No wonder then that Draco had been disgusted with the whole affair. It was all nothing but pageantry and farce; all of Riddle's pretty words about how the _pureblood _champion had won meant nothing, for the _Rigel Black _of the Tournament was nothing of the sort.

Pansy went to her classes, and thought all this over, and still studied and hung out with Draco and _Harry_. But even if she didn't say a word, there was still a tension there between them, and Pansy found she rather hated it. This was an odd experience: Pansy didn't properly _hate _many things.

She found herself observing Harry far more closely than she had ever observed Rigel; there had been times when she had observed Rigel quite closely indeed, but never quite in this way. There were things about Harry which she had not noticed before: she never wore fewer than two visible layers on her torso, and Pansy suspected she had another beneath. She pulled her shoulders forward when she wasn't comfortable.

One day when they were alone, Pansy said quite suddenly, "You never did do the family-tree potion, did you?"

"No," said Harry. "I didn't. Snape said I had, I think, but I haven't ever brewed it. Certainly I haven't _used _it." She shook her head. "Daphne—I didn't _like _her, you know. I don't. But she deserved to be here as much as I do. More, even."

"And what's _that _supposed to mean?" Pansy asked sharply. "Why call yourself less deserving? You've proven yourself ten times over." She thought she might know, but now, having had time to process that the _Rigel Black _she'd always known was _Harry Potter_, the thought sat poorly in her, and so she challenged her friend more openly.

"Well, she never committed blood identity theft, for one," said Harry wryly. "She didn't _know_. Not _knowing_, being lied to—well, that's not a crime she committed. Me? I'm a regular criminal over here." She gave a short, humorless laugh.

"Maybe—" said Pansy, then stopped, snapping her mouth shut. _Maybe it shouldn't have to be a crime_. The words swirled in her head and beat against her teeth, but she couldn't find it in her to say them aloud. Those were seditious words; in the context of the SOW Party, they were traitorous, would be tantamount to _treason_. And yet—

"Oh, there's no 'maybe' about it," said Harry, oblivious to Pansy's unspoken words. "We'll just have to hope that I don't get caught out."

Pansy laughed then, though it was hardly _funny_, and said, "Good luck with that, and I do mean that—but you're going to have trouble with that, I dare say. You're too damn conspicuous."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Harry muttered. Then she sighed, and the girls turned back to their studying. Exams were approaching them entirely too quickly for Pansy's comfort, and even if Harry hardly needed to study to fly through them, Pansy certainly did.

xxx

There was nothing she could _do _about any of the ideas burgeoning in the back of her mind, of course. She couldn't speak to Draco about them; she knew that, even knowing who Harry was, he'd more made an exception for her in his worldview than shifted his worldview to accommodate her. He wouldn't understand Pansy's dilemma. She didn't want to burden Harry, who had problems enough without Pansy's on top of them, with her own inner turmoil. And there was no one else who was safe to talk to.

"Pansy," said Aldon one day in the common room, his orange eyes intense and his expression serious. "Have you heard what's happened?" Pansy had gotten out of an exam not ten minutes earlier and had slumped onto one of the couches—or, well, she'd slumped as much as she ever allowed herself to slump in public. Certainly she was less put together than usual, but she supposed that, it being exam season, few were likely to notice.

"No," said Pansy slowly, straightening up and giving him a curious look. The way he'd put it told her that, had she heard, she would know immediately what he was referring to. "What's going on?"

"It turns out," said Aldon, slowly, in a low voice unlikely to be overheard, "that Daphne wasn't the only halfblood in Hogwarts."

"Oh?" Pansy tilted her head a little, and did not let on how unbalanced she suddenly felt. It couldn't be Harry; if it _was _Harry, then Pansy, as one of her closest friends, ought to have been called in to explain herself by now.

"Don't worry," he said, a smile on his face that didn't at all reach his eyes. "I don't expect it's anyone you know—Miriam Taylor."

"Ravenclaw, third-year," said Pansy absently, to cover her churning thoughts and emotions. She knew _of _the girl, but Aldon was right; she didn't _know _her. She knew _of _most people at Hogwarts while personally knowing many fewer. "How?" The ancestry potion wasn't brewed until fourth year, and Taylor was too young for that; there were few other things—perhaps even _no _other things—that could offer that kind of proof.

"It wasn't anything she did," said Aldon. "It's her father they found out—he had a faked family tree, was claiming to be an American squib. He's American, all right, but they checked his tree and realized that he's not a squib at all. He's a muggle."

"And so Taylor's a true halfblood," said Pansy. True halfbloods were rare; they consisted of children born to a witch or wizard and a muggle. She vaguely recalled them being more common, far back in history, but she expected their rates must have been low ever since the implementation of the Statute of Secrecy.

"Yes," said Aldon.

Pansy nodded to him and stood. "If you'll excuse me, Aldon, I think there's somewhere I must be." She left the common room before he could really reply to her, winding her way back to her room where she flopped onto her bed, hair spread out on her pillow, staring up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes.

Daphne Greengrass. Miriam Taylor. Would _Harriett Potter _join those names, the list of Hogwarts' secret halfbloods? Surely not. Harry, she was sure, had a _plan _for that eventuality. Her friend had a plan for just about everything, it seemed. Still, she couldn't help but worry.

Later that day, when Draco and Harry both were freed from their exams, Pansy went to the boys' room to speak to them. Luckily, it was only the three of them in there; she _could _have spoken in front of the other Slytherin boys, but this way she would not have to watch her words quite so much.

"I'm sure you'll hear about this soon enough," she said, "but there was a Ravenclaw third-year called Miriam Taylor, and I say _was _because they've just found out her father's a muggle."

Harry and Draco stared at her.

"Another halfblood," said Draco, a sharp humorless note in his voice. "What a joke our admissions policies and family-tree checks are, when so many slip through."

Harry's expression barely changed, but she must have been feeling more strongly beneath the surface because Draco flinched and turned to her.

"I don't mean _you_, of course," he said, very quietly. "For one you got in on the impeccable credentials of _Arcturus Rigel Black_, and for another you're worth ten of any of us—no offense, Pansy."

"None taken," said Pansy, who knew very well what he meant, even if he _did _have all the tact of an adolescent hippogryph in expressing it.

Taylor, of course, left school; she could hardly do anything else. Pansy made a quiet offer of solidarity and a listening ear to Harry, should she want it, and was not surprised when the other girl nodded absently and never took her up on it. Harry was fiercely independent, especially when she felt threatened, and now could not be a good time for her.

As for Pansy, she smiled softly and took in all the cutting words her classmates offered up, filing them away for later use, and did not opine on the case unless asked; when she _was _asked she kept her words light and did not let on where she truly stood. After all, she was only one young girl, and though she considered her options she swiftly realized there was nothing for her _to _do, not then, not when she was a loyal SOW Party daughter.

In the end, she did nothing for the rest of the year besides sit and think and bide her time.


End file.
